How Putin, Trump and Xi are aiming to make the EU fail

Vladimir Putin is in trouble. The war in Ukraine is not going well for him; casualties are mounting at an alarming rate; discontent in Russian society is growing amid serious economic hardships; and the Kremlin’s inner circle is becoming increasingly perplexed by their leader’s ineffectiveness. His response, for now, is the same as always: escalation. Against Ukraine, with more missiles; against his own citizens, with more repression; and against the EU, with attacks, threats, and provocations of various kinds — sabotage, cyberattacks, incursions — that are becoming increasingly bold and dangerous.

This latest strategy is driven by various motivations. One is to weaken the consensus in Europe behind support for Ukraine by fostering a sense of risk — the feeling that it is better not to get involved in trouble. With U.S. aid withdrawn, it is the EU that is propping up Kyiv’s defense, and for Putin, it is essential to break that pillar. Another motive is to sow discord and chaos within European societies, making them contentious and ineffective. Yet another is to create division within the EU, so that it does not move forward on the path to integration, which is its greatest strength. Putin perceives that he can escalate because Europeans lack a clear course of action in response. Concern over this drift toward Russian escalation is palpable in the public statements of leaders and diplomats from some European countries — and even more so in some private conversations.

It would be extremely naïve to underestimate these risks. Putin is, above all, a KGB operative, and he has a natural propensity to deploy these tactics. But the truly existential mistake is failing to connect this threat with the others coming from the world’s superpowers: the United States and China. They, too — albeit with different nuances — seek to dismantle or weaken the EU, and they act, using various tactics, to destroy or undermine it.

In the case of the United States, the issue is explicit. Washington’s new national security strategy bluntly states its intention to “cultivate resistance” to the EU, which it essentially describes as an adversary. In this case, the strategy involves attempts to provide political and technological support to Europhobic European nationalist groups. Trump’s toxicity has complicated the operation. The rejection he provokes in Europe is so widespread that many ultranationalists prefer to keep their distance. But there is room for moves to show support, and the platform provided by X remains skewed to their advantage.

It is no accident that J. D. Vance, in his famous speech at the Munich Security Conference in 2025, argued that the greatest danger to Europe is not Putin’s missiles but the alleged censorship of free speech — that is, actions to curb manipulations by the extreme right and by those who tilt the playing field in their favor. Nor is it any coincidence that the Trump administration wants to intervene to support Musk in a lawsuit before European courts over a fine imposed on X; or that, while considering withdrawing troops from Europe — thereby punishing certain countries — it is announcing possible new deployments agreed upon with friendly leaders — the president, not the prime minister, of Poland. What Trump, his supporters, and the tech magnates want is to dismantle the EU, which represents a regulatory and sanctioning force for containment and which keeps alive — even with its enormous flaws — an ideal of democracy and multilateralism that they abhor, preferring instead the law of force that works in their favor.

In the case of China, the matter is far more implicit. Beijing holds periodic summits with the EU and expresses interest in cooperating with it. It does not want the EU to suffer an economic downturn, since the bloc is a key customer for its exports. It wants Europeans to drift away from the U.S., and a certain degree of intra-European coordination serves that aim.

But only the naïve or the malicious fail to see that Beijing does not want a united, strong EU, because such a bloc could effectively confront it in its strategy of industrial domination; it prefers to divide and weaken us, and it does so in many ways.

China has been skillful in dealing with us one by one; it has provided lifelines to those who oppose the common project — most notably through massive investments in Viktor Orbán’s Hungary; it has exploited blind spots in the trade relationship to pump up its industrial muscle and destroy our industrial fabric through its talent and effort, but also through massive subsidies, dumping, forced transfers, or outright theft of intellectual property. In high levels of European politics there are those who believe that, among many other motives, China’s support for Russia in its invasion of Ukraine is also intended to wear down the EU, compelling it to commit itself to emergency defense instead of peacefully focusing on improving its competitiveness.

To think the three actions respond to a single, coordinated framework would be conspiratorial excess. But to ignore their contemporaneity, the multiplier effect of their coincidence, and the ease with which Trump courts Xi while inviting Putin to the G-20, would be suicidal folly.

It is equally reckless not to consider what this means given the whirlwind electoral calendar approaching in Europe. Citizens will decide. What is clear is that those three leaders — Putin, Trump and Xi — will be delighted if far-right forces that obstruct EU integration win.

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